In this chapter I shall attempt to place al-Ghazālī's political thought in the context of the Seljuq sultanate and the late Abbasid caliphate, starting from two premises: firstly, that al-Ghazālī's political thought is as significant as his mystical or theological thought; and secondly, that it is understandable only in the light of the political developments of his time.

I should like to begin to formulate an answer to the question raised in the title of the conference whose proceedings are collected in this volume: did the Seljuqs revitalise Islam? Probably they did or at least they brought a measure of order to a Muslim world in turmoil, but in so doing they sacrificed the prestige and the very role of the caliphate. There has been a wide debate about whether the Seljuqs were the defenders or the enemies of the caliphate. In a sense, they defended the caliphate insofar as they allowed it to endure a few centuries longer. But from another point of view, they were enemies of the caliphate in that they imposed a secular image of power against the religious legitimisation of the caliphal power. In other words, while, on the one hand, the Seljuqs protected the institution of the caliphate against its many adversaries, like the Ismaʿilis, on the other hand they made it evident that the management of power in Islam was no longer a question of the Islamic state but rather of an Islamic model of the state. Let us examine these contentions more closely.